My thought for the day on being hungry too soon after meals: What you eat matters, not just how much and when. This is especially true for people who are sensitive to sugar because they've become somewhat insulin-resistant.

That's a very important lesson I learned while on the South Beach Diet (which I think is a great plan for losing. The problem for me is there's not enough guidance on how to maintain afterwards.) I felt great on South Beach. After awhile, I could tell which foods had problematic ingredients in them: not necessarily because they tasted too sweet, but because I would get very hungry an hour or two after eating them.

To give you one example, I discovered the salad dressing that comes with one of my favorite Panera salads triggered significant hunger for me a couple of hours after. Once I requested balsamic dressing instead, I didn't have the same problem.

If you are becoming ravenous between meals, yes, it's possible you didn't eat enough. I'm still trying to figure out how to have meals somewhere between eating too little and being hungry too soon, and eating too much and feeling overstuffed. But amount may not be the only issue. It's possible you need more complex carbohydrates, fats, and/or protein to help you have a feeling of being sated between meals. But it's also possible that there's some sort of ingredient that's a trigger for you, and having less of it could help stabilize appetite.

There's no single list of problem foods or ingredients that works for everyone. But if you pay attention to how you feel after you eat various types of foods, you may be able to come up with a personalized list yourself, for you, that helps you lessen hunger between meals.

Thanks for these thoughts, Sharon - I certainly find that eggs keep me going, and low-protein lunches are the work of the devil...such as my beloved salad sandwiches, sadly. Also, soup is hopeless, though I love it. But these things are inconsistent. Sometimes I can have a low-protein meal and last for ages, if I’m not under stress. There are so many variables...how active you are, how stressed, how much caffeine you’re drinking, wine of course, (😊) how happy or how anxious you’re feeling. It’s tricky to isolate the foods that really make a difference, I find. Though I generally do well on eggs and badly on soup.

I know this is a bit off-topic, but if I get a smidgeon of sunblock or SPF moisturiser on my lips, it will give me a bitter taste in my mouth for hours, sparking off a gnawing hunger. I’ve only recently clocked onto this, and am now really careful about not getting these creams on my lips!

In the beginning, if I got hungry, I often realized I had forgotten to add a serving of something fatty-nuts, cheese, oil added to the entree.

I was convinced for years that I had to have a rather dense serving of protein, animal protein, not something a mixture of protein with a starch, such a beans or the fraction of protein in starch itself. It turns out that was all in my head. I always knew mixtures of certain foods net more protein, but they just seemed to take so much more volume to have it add up. Now a meal with even two starches, like a potato and grain, is fine.

In fact, in a study of a list of I think 50 foods, plain boiled potatoes were found to be number one in satiety. (Low carb people just felt a cold chill run through them.) Adding flavorings decreased the satiety, proving the conjecture that the greater the reward factor, the ironic term that means the inverse of satiety, the less satiety there is. I think it's because the brain actually likes the intense flavors of salt/fat/sugar because they infer dense calories, which have such a great return on investment of effort.

I've said before that I am not involved in No S or any eating program for the greatest thinness possible or even the healthiest, whatever that is. It's for the the best mix of foods for pleasure and vitality, that I feel best about eating before, during, and after.

The beat goes on._________________Count plates, not calories. Three a day. 8 years & counting
Age 64
SBMI Jan/10-30.8
Jan/12-26.8
Mar/13-24.9 Stayed at +/- 8-lb. for three years Sept/17 22.8 (but more fluctuation)
Mar/18 22.2